


die and rise the same

by Newtondale



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Episode: s15e18 Despair, Fix-It, I don't care what they say. It's mutual, M/M, Post-Episode: s15e18 Despair
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-12
Updated: 2020-11-12
Packaged: 2021-03-09 23:00:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,282
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27524233
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Newtondale/pseuds/Newtondale
Summary: Dean knows how this goes.They’ve lost Cas half a dozen times now, over the years. He knows the drill. He hurts, then he grieves, then he fights, and then - although sometimes in the middle here he gives up, accepts the enormity of what he’s trying to do, the impossibility of it all, but still always, always, always - he gets Cas back.
Relationships: Castiel/Dean Winchester
Comments: 4
Kudos: 105





	die and rise the same

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you to [sharkfish](https://sharkfish.tumblr.com) for reading over this for me!

Dean knows how this goes. 

They’ve lost Cas half a dozen times now, over the years. He knows the drill. He hurts, then he grieves, then he fights, and then - although sometimes in the middle here he gives up, accepts the enormity of what he’s trying to do, the impossibility of it all, but still always, always, _always_ \- he gets Cas back. 

Dean knows how this is supposed to go. He hurts and he cries and he _screams_ , and then he gets back up again and keeps on fighting. But he doesn’t want to keep fighting. He doesn’t want to get back up. He doesn’t want anything, and he wants everything he can’t have, and it hurts, and it hurts, and it- 

They’ve lost Cas half a dozen times now, over the years, but Dean can’t quite put his finger on how many times _he’s_ lost Cas. On the moment it became a loss he didn’t quite share with Sam. Something different. Something personal. Something like lov- 

Dean doesn’t know how this is supposed to go. 

Cas flipped the script. He was always good at that, right from the start, and for a while there Dean thought he was used to it. But now here he is, collapsed on the floor with a bloody handprint on his shoulder and he _can’t._ He can’t get up, can’t keep on fighting, can’t go through this all again, _again_ , when every time it feels like it’s going to tear him apart from the inside. 

He’s done this half a dozen times before, yet every time feels like the first. He’s tried ignoring the pain, pushing it down and focusing on the hunt and pretending, pretending, until he almost manages to convince himself it’s not there. He’s tried drinking, beer and whiskey and then anything he could get his hands on, because a hangover hurts less than heartbreak, because an empty bottle is the kind of future he can handle. He’s tried just letting himself _feel_ , telling himself that he needs to feel it before he can move on, that in time it’ll pass and it won’t hurt so much - but it never works. It consumes him until there’s nothing else but agony and anguish and still no angel by his side. 

He’s tried denial and anger and acceptance and apathy, and none of it is enough to replace what he’s lost. 

So instead he just sits there, collapsed on the floor with a bloody handprint on his shoulder, and he cries, and he remembers.

He remembers the days when a handprint on his shoulder was an embarrassment, a weight of a different kind. Burden rather than belonging. Something he hid and that Sam teased him about and that he’d have given anything to be rid of. He doesn’t remember when that changed, can’t remember a moment he _liked_ having it there, but at the same time remembers that he was sad to see it gone. That it was just another loss, on top of so many unbearable losses, that left him kneeling in the dirt in a cemetery so close to home. 

He remembers those early days, when there was nothing between them but duty, a civility that sometimes bordered on hostility. When it was the job, the job, demons to fight and monsters to hunt, and there was no room in the day for anything that wasn’t in service of stopping Lucifer. He thinks about how they failed, and they failed, and they kept fighting anyway. How Castiel fell, was corrupted day by day, by the shit and the Earth and _Dean._

How slowly, so slowly that Dean barely even noticed, duty turned to loyalty. How loyalty led to loss. How one day loss was gone and left devotion in its place. 

And he remembers that first betrayal, the day devotion died. A betrayal that left him bleeding, like nothing he’d ever known, that hurt more than he could ever have prepared for. He remembers a ring of holy fire, and the blasphemy it brought to light. He remembers a coat, fished from a river, soaking wet but still so bloody. The coat that Cas once wore, folded up into the trunk. Carried from car to car, from job to job, through those very darkest days. Because grief doesn’t care about betrayal; grief comes anyway, even when it shouldn’t, love with no place to go but the old coat cradled in his arms.

He remembers the Cas who didn’t remember. He remembers the Cas who did. He remembers when the darkest days got darker, and Cas was far too far away. 

He remembers those days in purgatory, when all he wanted was Castiel. He remembers the days after purgatory, when all he wanted was Castiel. He remembers the days after, the years after, through every betrayal and every bereavement, when all he wanted was Castiel.

He remembers a bloody hand on his bloody cheek in the cold stone of a crypt. A sword stabbed into wood. Churches and forests and bedsides made holy only by his prayer. His back against the wall in an alley in the rain. Tears in newly-human eyes. Stolen glances, fleeting touches, and hugs that would never be tight enough. A hunter’s pyre and scorched wings and the condemning stillness of a lake. He thinks _I’d rather have you, cursed or not,_ and _I’m not leaving here without you._ He thinks _don’t ever change,_ and _don’t make me lose you too,_ and _I need you -_

And about Cas, through it all. He thinks about Cas, by his side, about Cas, about Cas, about _we’re making it up as we go,_ and _I’ll come with you,_ and _I lo-_

He remembers the days when having Castiel by his side was enough. When the open road and an angel by his side was all he needed. All he wanted. A beer and a burger and jokes that didn’t hit, squinted eyes and a tilt of the head and -

He wonders when that stopped being enough. When he started to want _more_. Started to want the thing he could never have. 

Things he maybe could’ve had. This whole time. If only he’d -

 _Happiness isn’t in the having, it’s in just being_ , he said. Well Dean must be broken, because happiness couldn’t be further away without Castiel by his side. He’s spent too damn long without Castiel by his side.

And Castiel doesn’t always come home. After more than a decade, Dean has come to terms with that. Cas doesn’t always come home, but that’s okay - because as long as Dean’s around, there’ll be someone to _bring_ him home. 

So he’ll bring him home. 

Dean stops crying. He picks himself up. He doesn’t grieve, because to grieve would be to accept that Castiel is gone, and he won’t accept it. He never will. Because if he taught Castiel to feel, then Castiel taught him faith. So he fights, and he fights and he _fights_ , and - 

And he brings Castiel home. 

Dean doesn’t know how this is supposed to go, but he’s done being afraid. He’s done holding the truth at the back of his throat and choking through the days. He’s done hiding, he’s done pretending, and he’s done grieving for all the time they’ve lost to fear. Because there will never be a right time, but there will always be a _now._

So he says it. He says it without elegance, without diminishing. He finally says it, lays it all out, lets it stand and speak for itself. 

He says, broken and bleeding; “I love you too.” 

And Castiel looks at him, with that fond look in his eyes, and says; “Hello, Dean.”

**Author's Note:**

> “We can die by it, it not live by love,  
> And if unfit for tombs and hearse  
> Our legend be, it will be fit for verse;  
> And if no piece of chronicle we prove,  
> We’ll build in sonnets pretty rooms;  
> As well a well-wrought urn becomes  
> The greatest ashes, as half-acre tombs;  
> And by these hymns, all shall approve  
> Us canonized for love.” 
> 
> \- John Donne, The Canonization 
> 
> Also heavily influenced by one of my favourite poems, Philip Levine's 'The Simple Truth', which was almost the title. But I'm a John Donne bitch at the end of the day. Glad my literature degree is being put to good use.


End file.
